Which is better, a multi polar world or a nuclear war?

MildSteel said:

Honestly I understand that the U.S. needs to be involved in Ukraine. Furthermore, I really don't have a problem with us making a play to bring them over to our side. My problem is the way we went about it. That stuff of helping to facilitate the demise of a democratically elected government, right of Russia's border in direct defiance of Russia in the name of maintaining our status as the world's sole superpower was way overboard. Therefore I say, that it would be better to tolerate a multi-polar world than to risk a conflict that has the possibility of going nuclear.

Click to expand...

There is zero risk of this conflict going nuclear.

Fleming said:

There is zero risk of this conflict going nuclear.

Click to expand...

I've tried to explain this to him before. You're not going to get anywhere with it. Also Victoria Nuland is a Sith Lord (or apprentice, I suppose) with Jedi-Mind-Control-Powers. She can cause riots in Ukraine by saying "F the EU" afterwards.

JumpinJack said:

We DO share power with other countries. That is how it should be.

Click to expand...

Although we do share power to an extent, the fact is that the U.S. has the preponderance of power in the world and is indeed the world's sole superpower. No other country on the face of the Earth can project power all over the globe in both the economic and military spheres. There is simply no competitor in that regard.

Glen Contrarian said:

A nuclear war would certainly be better than a gamma-ray burst pointed at our direction within five light-years.

A nuclear war would certainly be better than a stellar-mass black hole wandering too close to our planet.

A nuclear war would certainly be better than the earth being struck by a moon-sized comet.

I'm running out here - anybody else got any suggestions?

Click to expand...

extension of reality TV to the point where it takes over 100% of publicly available programming?

MildSteel said:

Although we do share power to an extent, the fact is that the U.S. has the preponderance of power in the world and is indeed the world's sole superpower. No other country on the face of the Earth can project power all over the globe in both the economic and military spheres. There is simply no competitor in that regard.

Click to expand...

True, fortunately.

MildSteel said:

Honestly I understand that the U.S. needs to be involved in Ukraine. Furthermore, I really don't have a problem with us making a play to bring them over to our side. My problem is the way we went about it. That stuff of helping to facilitate the demise of a democratically elected government, right of Russia's border in direct defiance of Russia in the name of maintaining our status as the world's sole superpower was way overboard. Therefore I say, that it would be better to tolerate a multi-polar world than to risk a conflict that has the possibility of going nuclear.

Click to expand...

My criticism hasn't been that the US was courting Ukraine in an attempt to pull them into western influence, all along, Russia was doing the same. My problem begins when Ukraine moves the direction that the US was attempting to block, and the subsequent US/EU response which has given a measure of credibility to Putins action.

Fleming said:

There is zero risk of this conflict going nuclear.

Click to expand...

You say that, but I am not so sure. Conflicts, particularly when they have reached the stage of violent confrontation tend to take a life of their own. That said, I do agree that at the present moment the risk is low, but I disagree that it is zero. Even if there were no conflict, the mere presence of the weapons makes it such that there is a chance of such a conflict taking place. You cannot say that the chance is zero.

MildSteel said:

You say that, but I am not so sure. Conflicts, particularly when they have reached the stage of violent confrontation tend to take a life of their own. That said, I do agree that at the present moment the risk is low, but I disagree that it is zero. Even if there were no conflict, the mere presence of the weapons makes it such that there is a chance of such a conflict taking place. You cannot say that the chance is zero.

Click to expand...

This is a conflict in which only one side (Russia) has nuclear weapons. The US and its allies Will never go to war with Russia over Ukraine.

MildSteel said:

Therefore I say, that it would be better to tolerate a multi-polar world than to risk a conflict that has the possibility of going nuclear.

Click to expand...

Utter paranoia. Neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Obama considers Ukraine to be worth mutual nuclear annihilation.

Simpleχity;1064300209 said:

Utter paranoia. Neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Obama considers Ukraine to be worth mutual nuclear annihilation.

Click to expand...

Indeed, which is why Merkel is Right to say that there is no way Ukraine can win this militarily.

`
I vote to Release the Kraken.

Fleming said:

Indeed, which is why Merkel is Right to say that there is no way Ukraine can win this militarily.

Click to expand...

Technically Merkel is correct. Assuming this is so, is Merkel willing to up the ante if Putin remains inflexible at Minsk?

Would she consider/support a SWIFT ban?

Simpleχity;1064300231 said:

Technically Merkel is correct. Assuming this is so, is Merkel willing to up the ante if Putin remains inflexible at Minsk?

Would she consider/support a SWIFT ban?

Click to expand...

Let's see if the regime in Kiev is ready to be flexible and realistic. So far there is little sign of that.

Fleming said:

Let's see if the regime in Kiev is ready to be flexible and realistic.

Click to expand...

Ahh. The "regime" cliche. Tipped your hand.

Fleming said:

So far there is little sign of that.

Click to expand...

I disagree...

Special status to E. Ukraine regions, amnesty to combatants

September 16, 2014
The Ukrainian parliament has approved laws on special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, as well as amnesty for those participating in the hostilities. The law on the special status of Lugansk and Donetsk Regions guarantees the right to use and study Russian or any other language in Ukraine. It also states that local elections are to take place in the regions on December 7. The head of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, earlier welcomed the law on special status for Ukraine’s eastern regions proposed by President Poroshenko.

“The law on the special status of Donbass generally reflects the priorities we voiced at the September 1 negotiations. That’s why, even though a lot remains unclear, we may say that a peaceful solution has received its first chance of being implemented,” Plotnitsky told RIA Novosti.

Click to expand...

BTW, you never enlightened us Fleming. What have the rebels offered in the realm of flexibility?

Simpleχity;1064300614 said:

Ahh. The "regime" cliche. Tipped your hand.


I disagree...

Special status to E. Ukraine regions, amnesty to combatants



BTW, you never enlightened us Fleming. What have the rebels offered in the realm of flexibility?

Click to expand...

Unlike you I don't feel the need to see everything in black and white. Apparently this is very disturbing to you.

As for the rebels in eastern Ukraine, so far they have not shown any sign of being responsible, let alone flexible or reasonable.
Do you deny that the current government in Kiev has on numerous occasions declared that they want to crush the rebels militarily?

MildSteel said:

Although we do share power to an extent, the fact is that the U.S. has the preponderance of power in the world and is indeed the world's sole superpower. No other country on the face of the Earth can project power all over the globe in both the economic and military spheres. There is simply no competitor in that regard.

Click to expand...

I didn't say we share power equally. But America and other First World countries share power. Always have. We are indeed a superpower. However, China is fast approaching (and in fact owns a LOT of our country) and wields enormous power economically in the world, as well as politically. I think China has the largest military. India, Russia, and North Korea are approaching us in military size.

It is arguable whether China or the U.S. wields more power in the world.

JumpinJack said:

I didn't say we share power equally. But America and other First World countries share power. Always have. We are indeed a superpower. However, China is fast approaching (and in fact owns a LOT of our country) and wields enormous power economically in the world, as well as politically. I think China has the largest military. India, Russia, and North Korea are approaching us in military size.

It is arguable whether China or the U.S. wields more power in the world.

Click to expand...

I am sorry but that is ludicrous. China, Russia, India and North Korea come nowhere near approaching the US in politica' or military's power. You are confusing Numbers of soliders with military power.

Fleming said:

I am sorry but that is ludicrous. China, Russia, India and North Korea come nowhere near approaching the US in politica' or military's power. You are confusing Numbers of soliders with military power.

Click to expand...

I said "largest." Not "strongest." Back to school for you! Reading 101.

Besides, ....yes, Virginia. The other countries are close in strength to the U.S.

U.S. strength factor 0.2208
Russia strength factor 0.2355
China strength factor 0.2594

JumpinJack said:

I said "largest." Not "strongest." Back to school for you! Reading 101.

Click to expand...

Read your OWN post in which you are referring to power.

MildSteel said:

I think that you are dead wrong. A U.S. assault on Crimea would be a direct attack on the heart of Russian naval power.?

Click to expand...

That heart quit beating 25 years ago.

The Russians are not going to go nuclear over a peninsula in the Black Sea.

Simpleχity;1064300209 said:

Utter paranoia. Neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Obama considers Ukraine to be worth mutual nuclear annihilation.

Click to expand...

Nevertheless, however serious the Russian/Ukrainian crisis is, as pointed out at the Council on Foreign Relations, its a crises of US/EU making.

ccording to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.

Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.

But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...mer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault

Dayton3 said:

That heart quit beating 25 years ago.

The Russians are not going to go nuclear over a peninsula in the Black Sea.

Click to expand...

And the US is not going to attack Russia or in any way intervene militarily in the Ukranian conflict.

Fleming said:

Do you deny that the current government in Kiev has on numerous occasions declared that they want to crush the rebels militarily?

Click to expand...

Putin certainly didn't hold back in regards to Chechnya.

Simpleχity;1064300940 said:

Putin certainly didn't hold back in regards to Chechnya.

Click to expand...

Very true. The only difference being that Putin was in a position to win that fight militarily, which the current government in Kiev isn't.

Fleming said:

And the US is not going to attack Russia or in any way intervene militarily in the Ukranian conflict.

Click to expand...

Might not have a choice.